dec-24-st-peters.md

Sat. Dec. 24, 2016: St. Peter’s

1: the people have seen a great light

Isaiah 9:2-7
Titus 2:11-14: the grace of God has appeared
Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
Psalm 96

lectionary

History of Christmas:

How is it that we find ourselves in the night-time of the year, celebrating the nativity of Jesus?

How it got to be Dec. 25th

At the founding of our country – very little attention paid by the Puritans. (One of the scandals of the “Anglicans” was their observance of Christmas

Much of what we observe today a product of the commercial and business interests of the 19^th / 20^th century

Each of us here tonight carries memories of our local and family traditions. (I asked a clerk at Publix the other day whether she was going to be spending time with little family or big family – she immediately knew what I was talking about. Her big family is in Georgia and they hoped to get there next month, but this weekend it is a quiet time together with the local family.)

by the 4^th c. a cluster of references to one of 2 dates: Dec. 25 & Jan 6. (the latter is the time in which Orthodox Christmas is observed) A major Anglican liturgical scholar was one of the first to advocate for an argument that the dates chosen for Jesus’ birth are actually related to the date at which it was calculated he was conceived which was assumed to be related to the time he died.

Christmas is old – but Easter goes back to the origins of Christianity

Challenge of preaching on such a day:

Often I sense that the emotions of the day/night are more powerful than anything I can bring

I don’t carry memories of great sermons that I might have heard, trying to copy elements of them to make this a memorable sermon.

There aren’t readily at hand by “googling” a lot of Christmas sermons that have stood the test of time. I found a couple, from Martin Luther, Lancelot Andrewes, Aelred of Rievaulx.

Classic Christmas movies, on the other hand, come readily to mind.

They have characteristics like: happy ending, generosity prevails, while catastrophe seems to be pending rescue wins in the end – some of the themes I have tried to draw out of Isaiah these past 4 weeks.

• It’s a wonderful life
• A Christmas story
• Miracle on 34^th st
• A Charlie Brown Christmas
• Home Alone
• White Christmas

And of course there’s the whole raft of “classic” music – some of which we try to sing tonight.

(I am reminded of something a wise person said to me many years ago that the thing people are most attached to in the traditions of the church is the music.)

This year the meaning of Christmas has come to me in song and film

Insight from Oh, God

• Told my mother that it’s the movie where God looks like George Burns – thinking that she might recognize the image from her younger days
• he makes appearance in a form and language we can understand
• he chooses messengers who are quite ordinary
• what do we do when he shows up – expecting change in our behavior
• He’s not happy with the way things are going: violence, killing, environment, …

cf. song: What if God

Lyrics:

What if God was one of us? / Just a slob like one of us / Just a stranger on the bus / Tryin’ to make his way home?… Joan Osborne

If God had a name what would it be?
And would you call it to his face?
If you were faced with Him in all His glory
What would you ask if you had just one question?

And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
And yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah

• The song deals with various aspects of belief in God by asking questions inviting the listener to consider how they might relate to God, such as “Would you call [God’s name] to his face?” or “Would you want to see [God’s face] if seeing meant that you would have to believe in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets?” Wikipedia

The song we have sung during Advent by Mary Haugen has given me a new insight about Christmas. It is that in particular that I want to share tonight.

He had us singing that we would “choose to believe a little child will lead us” … that “Immanuel is within us and God dwells within us always” if we let our hearts see what is true.

• I made the connection for the first time between the focus on a babe (in the manger) and Jesus’ admonition that we must be like little children to enter (participate in) the kingdom

A child to lead us

What is this child-likeness? What might it look like?

• Like a child:
  • Like children in the wonder that we bring
  • Like children in the anticipation of good things
  • Like children in the confidence that “All manner of things shall be well.”
  • Like children in the flexibility to be at home anywhere
  • Like children in being able to see the spiritual world in this world – the spiritual made manifest, the divine incarnate – basic Christmas stuff.
  • I have seen it on the faces of many children who end up being caught up in stories – believing every word, living the world brought forth
  • I have seen it in the eyes of children receiving communion – they don’t “believe” that God is there – they know it!
• It is:
  • trust
  • acceptance of life and death, and all in between
  • it is where each of us begins and ends our life – all the grown up stuff is … ?
  • I saw it in the faces of children in homeless shelters as a librarian from Jamaica read them stories – the lights, glitter, and fascination were not imaginary
  • Clearly it is in the faces of children all over the place at Christmas time – at it’s best

Most of all I thought, “Yes, that’s what Jesus was telling us.” The Gospel is really about that 3^rd verse from Haugen’s song. If we’re going to see Immanuel, we’re going to have to look with the eyes of a child. To be like little children.

The gospels tell us that. Paul writes about it.

• Mark 10:15
  • ^13-16 The people brought children to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. The disciples shooed them off. But Jesus was irate and let them know it: “Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom. Mark this: Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.” Then, gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them.
• Ephesians 5:1-2
  • 5 ^1-2 Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
• Luke 18:16
  • ^15-17 People brought babies to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. When the disciples saw it, they shooed them off. Jesus called them back. “Let these children alone. Don’t get between them and me. These children are the kingdom’s pride and joy. Mark this: Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.”
• When I try to imagine the kingdom God is calling us to – I don’t imagine it populated with grown adults. It’s not about responsibility, taking care of others, working hard, saving up for a rainy day. Those are good things and most of us, after all, spend most of our lives being grown-ups.

But when I imagine the Kingdom of God,

• it’s about other sorts of things, things more easily associated with children:
  • wonder
  • creativity
  • enthusiasm
  • a sparkle in the eye – as if to reflect God peeking through
• So tonight, carry with you a Christmas blessing, marked with a child-like awareness of the nearness of God (Immanuel), let your heart learn to see and believe and rejoice, that we are led by a child. His names will be: Amazing Counselor, Strong God, Eternal Father, Prince of Wholeness. His name is Jesus.

Christmas Season Blessing

May Almighty God, who sent his Son to take our nature upon him, bless you in this holy season, scatter the darkness of sin, and brighten your heart with the light of his holiness. Amen.

May God, who sent his angels to proclaim the glad news of the Savior’s birth, fill you with joy, and make you heralds of the Gospel. Amen.

May God, who in the Word made flesh joined heaven to earth and earth to heaven, give you his peace and favor. Amen.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you and remain with you for ever. Amen.

or this

May Christ, who by his Incarnation gathered into one things earthly and heavenly, fill you with his joy and peace; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you, and remain with you always. Amen.

advent4-dec-18

Sun, Dec 18, 2016: St. Peter’s

Sermon Fourth Advent

The strange circumstances of King Ahaz

Bible Study and
lectionary

In our reading from Isaiah this week, God responds with as it were a sigh of exasperation at King Ahaz who says in a voice of mock piety, "Nah, I don’t need a sign from you. I’m doing just fine. To which God (the Lord) says, “Well, I’m going to give you one anyway. A young woman is with child. And his name will be Immanuel.”

That’s not particularly remarkable we can observe, except perhaps the name which means “God is with you.”

But then if we add some of the back story to the short reading it all just seems even weirder – at least to me.

You see Ahaz is being attacked from an alliance of the northern kingdom and Syria (“2 kings” from the reading). God has promised to rescue King Ahaz from the predicament. But Ahaz thinks he can do just fine without God’s help so he makes the response we have heard today.

The text as we all know was used by the writers of the New Testament as an anticipation of the coming of Christ. I am interested for the moment, however, in the perplexing sort of way that God (through Isaiah’s words) gives Judah a vision of hope in a time of great danger and intrigue.

• opening of Romans
• Matthew, birth of Messiah

A clear theme from these past weeks

This man, a prophet, named Isaiah? A man so much of his own time and speaking God’s message to his own time. But his intimacy with God gives him a heart to see a time that is not yet real but that in God’s time will be.

• Be a people of peace.
• Be a people of justice
• Be a people of mercy

These were words that we heard at the conclusion of the message 3 weeks ago.

We began to learn a song … choose to hope, love. Love is greater than hatred.

We are sisters and brothers. We share the same story.

One way to understand the word of God in the Bible we call scriptures is to say that we recognize ourselves in the stories we hear. It is we ourselves in these prophecies. God’s message transcends time.

Last week we heard a phrase that we can use to think of the kind of time that we live in. A time that may appear broken, even evil times, but – we live in an already but not yet world.

The world around us is broken, violent, full of injustice and lack of mercy – but – we have a foot in a new land.

I have a particular image that I think in this already but not yet space. It is like the mixing together of the divine and the human. It is the meeting of God and mortal. An old Celtic image thinks of the shore where land and sea meet, waves crashing and mixing with the sand. If the Ocean is the divine world and the shore is the human world, at that point they are mixed together.

This leads to another similar image from a similar environment. If at one moment we are floating in a boat, on a lake or a river. Then we reach our leg over the side and we step onto the muddy ground. One moment floating. The next moment standing on secure earth.

So perhaps is the mystery of the already but not yet that we must live out our lives of faith, hope and love.

Image of William McNamara Earthy Mysticism

I once saw an Old Testament prophet. I have thought ever since through the decades that time had somehow melted for me in a church auditorium in Pueblo Colorado. I didn’t who the speaker was, but my priest had thought I might enjoy it so I accompanied him. His name was William McNamara.

He was introduced by a priest, possibly a bishop, I’m not sure, but a giant of a man walked up to the microphone. He had a long beard and a cassock that reached to the floor. All you really saw was wild hair growing from his head and long flowing robes. Then he spoke. He spoke with a boom. And somehow it was as authoritative as if God himself were speaking. At the time I thought, "So that’s what the people meant when they heard Jesus speak and said that he spoke with authority. web site

I learned from his talk that he was a hermit-monk and had founded several monastic communities of hermits – interestingly they were founded as combined men/women communities. I learned that he had just written a book titled Mystical Passion.

He talked about contemplative prayer that was meant for everybody, all kinds of people. Later I would learn that Thomas Merton said much the same thing. He said things like prayer needs to be grounded in the real nitty gritty of the life we live. It needs to be grounded in what he called an earthy mysticism.

I was utterly captivated by him and his writings helped me get through seminary. A time of a lot of nitty gritty somehow sandwiched with a lot of prayer.

Building on a lifetime of teaching that his “earthy mysticism” was for all Christians, McNamara produced many guides for folks trying to be faithful in difficult times. One such guide is:

Rule of Life from: earth mysticism

What to do?
Everyone — all lay people, students, workers, homemakers, even beach bums — needs a Rule. Try this:

1. Wake up and fall on your knees — ten minutes of prayer. Put your stamp on the day with God’s help. Read a gospel or a psalm.
2. Live mindfully all day. No compulsions. No frenzy. No trivialities. Joy in everything. Make something, love, especially.
3. Angelus at noon. Stop!
4. On the way home — stop in church, in a park, a favorite spot. Do something wild every day, i.e., break the moribund daily pattern and imitate Christ – the Wildman.
5. Glad, loving entry at home — share something you noticed that day; then music, laughter, and good food.
6. Visit the sick, the poor, aged, children and animals. Play. Walk. Run.
7. One half hour of meditative reading leading to quiet prayer. Go out or to bed peacefully.

obituary and summary: obituary

Message of the song: “learn to believe a little child will lead us”

I, at least, have been learning to find a way this Advent with the help of the song we have been learning from Marty Haugen.

• we have a choice in what to believe, “that love is stronger than hatred.”
• if our hearts learn to see that we all share the same story, love can shine.
• and finally that we can recognize that we are to be led by one who is a “little child.”

That is where we find ourselves at this time. We must prepare ourselves for living into the vision: the Peaceable Kingdom under the leadership of a child. What a strange journey we are faced with?

advent3-dec-11.md

Sermon Third Advent:

Dec. 11, 2016

lectionary

• a highway there (Isaiah some more)
• ransomed of the LORD break out in song
• possible use of Magnificat
• James “be patient” til the coming of the Lord
• John the Baptist – see I’m sending my messenger ahead to prepare the way

In previous Sundays I focused on the readings from the prophet Isaiah in an attempt to hear an Advent message in a fresh light.

Isaiah has looked out at his own country and seen a leadership made impotent by rampant injustice and a failure to reflect the deeper values of the people of Israel. In spite of expecting destruction from the legacy of these leadership problems, Isaiah brings a message from God that inspires hope and expectation in a time to come.

Advent is a time of preparation for a time to come. In the Orthodox church it is a period of self-reflection and self-examination that lasts 40 days – mirroring the time of preparation in Lent. It is a time to be taken seriously. Perhaps it is a time to take time seriously.

In today’s world we have mostly lost the sense of urgency that was at the heart of Advent preparation. There is after all a sense that it is a time of preparation for Christmas. For the past 150 years or so Christmas has come to be a business model, a family gathering time, a nostalgic interlude. It was not such prior to the 19th c.

The word advent has to do with “coming”, “approach”, something off in the future that is approaching. In our morning prayer time of 2 weeks ago we read a reflection that associated the word “adventure” with “Advent.” I was startled because I hadn’t ever really recognized that before, but it’s obvious. I looked up some definitions of “adventure” and found there to be quite a variety of nuances to the word, a verb as well as a noun, but the general sense builds on a meaning of something about to happen. There are adventurers and one can “adventure” in a gamble or a risk, e.g. of one’s money. Our youngest daughter used to get excited when we were headed for a trip somewhere. She would think of it as an “adventure” (I think I may have started it, actually) but she couldn’t say the word accurately. She would say, "We’re going to go on a “venture”.

I used to just think it was cute. Now I think there was insight in her small mispronunciation. In Advent we prepare for an adventure with God made manifest (incarnated) into our lives and life of our world. We will never be able to truly encounter that “God made manifest” unless we venture forth. With courage and anticipation, like we were children on our way to a park or a picnic.

Middle English: from Old French aventure (noun), aventurer (verb), based on Latin adventurus ‘about to happen,’ from advenire ‘arrive.’

Every step of the way on that adventure, God’s message for us is to proceed with expectation, longing, waiting, preparing. It is looking forward to what we may not be able to really see with any clarity. It might be counter-intuitive, but we venture forth anyway.

Christian life built on “Already but not yet”

Our lives as faithful Christians is built on such a prophetic vantage point. It is founded on seeing something that is already accomplished but perhaps not yet visible. Already but not yet.

It is accomplished – we must continually work & prepare for the day to come. The coming days, the redemption, the crooked paths made straight, is all done through God’s work. But as Bp. Tutu reminded us a couple of weeks ago, “God has made us responsible for his reputation.”

We are his instruments. We are the ones to prepare the way for the Lord. We are God’s hands and God’s feet. We are God’s heart in a world gone cold.

In the words of the often-quoted story:

God Will Save Me (many versions of this over-quoted story)

A terrible storm came into a town and local officials sent out an emergency warning that the riverbanks would soon overflow and flood the nearby homes. They ordered everyone in the town to evacuate immediately.

A faithful Christian man heard the warning and decided to stay, saying to himself, “I will trust God and if I am in danger, then God will send a divine miracle to save me.”

The neighbors came by his house and said to him, “We’re leaving and there is room for you in our car, please come with us!” But the man declined. “I have faith that God will save me.”

As the man stood on his porch watching the water rise up the steps, a man in a canoe paddled by and called to him, “Hurry and come into my canoe, the waters are rising quickly!” But the man again said, “No thanks, God will save me.”

The floodwaters rose higher pouring water into his living room and the man had to retreat to the second floor. A police motorboat came by and saw him at the window. “We will come up and rescue you!” they shouted. But the man refused, waving them off saying, “Use your time to save someone else! I have faith that God will save me!”

The flood waters rose higher and higher and the man had to climb up to his rooftop.

A helicopter spotted him and dropped a rope ladder. A rescue officer came down the ladder and pleaded with the man, “Grab my hand and I will pull you up!” But the man STILL refused, folding his arms tightly to his body. “No thank you! God will save me!”

Shortly after, the house broke up and the floodwaters swept the man away and he drowned.

When in Heaven, the man stood before God and asked, “I put all of my faith in You. Why didn’t You come and save me?”

And God said, “Son, I sent you a warning. I sent you a car. I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?”

Advent is for preparing but not for Christmas – not for the birth of the Christ child (that already happened)
Advent is about preparing for the new world that has already been accomplished but not yet.
It entails continuing to do our part to usher in that day – even though it is God’s kingdom and God’s doing
The old story about waiting for God to deliver (as rescuer comes)

Gaudete Sunday (Leave out?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudete_Sunday – this the 3rd Sunday of this Adventure we call Advent.

The day takes its common name from the Latin word Gaudete (“Rejoice”), the first word of the introit of this day’s Mass:[1]

Pink Candle

• The spirit of the Liturgy all through Advent is one of expectation and preparation for the feast of Christmas as well as for the second coming of Christ, and the penitential exercises suitable to that spirit are thus on Gaudete Sunday suspended, as were, for a while in order to symbolize that joy and gladness in the promised Redemption.[1] (Wikipedia)
• While the theme of Advent is a focus on the coming of Jesus in three ways: His first, His present and His final Advent,[2]

Isaiah: His deliverance of God’s message, good news,

Isaiah:

• blind shall see etc.
• they shall see the glory of the Lord
• desert shall bloom
• the ransomed of the Lord shall return

Collapse of ½ the country

• Sennacherib knocking on Jerus’ gates
• Isaiah’s word helped Hezekiah to strike a bargain with Sennacherib
• bought 100 years of semi-independence

setting Hezekiah (next chapter) – will he be the one to save Israel?

text anticipates a coming time of harmony

cp. Is 40.3 & Mal 3.1 preparing the way

Isaiah message is a vision looking out at some kind of new day

Isaiah spoke God’s message of a coming time of peace and redemption, crooked ways made straight, for his own time. He looked out at the Assyrian Sennacherib’s threat to Israel and he saw in it not so much the approaching doom that it anticipated. Rather he saw God’s redemption being fulfilled.

In much the same way, John the Baptist looked at the trying times of Herod’s court and the self-destructive ways of the people of his time and he didn’t so much see the doom – a doom that was surely coming. He saw God’s redemption being made manifest, being incarnated, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

And so it is that we are challenged by God’s word in our own day. We may look around us and see the evil, self-destructive forces, agents of God’s judgment on our world. But the prophetic word for us is to see instead the victory of hope and love.

We can hear an echo of that tri-partite redemption of time in the “proclamation of faith” in our Eucharistic Prayer “A”.

Christ has come. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

Matthew: today’s reading

In today’s reading from the gospel according to Matthew, we hear about debates and wonderings at the time of Jesus. Who was the one to come? Who was the expected one?

The people lived in such a power-packed Advent time. They were filled with expectation for some new thing to be done by God in their midst.

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

Jesus told the crowds about John that he was the one that Isaiah had talked about so many centuries before.

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way before you.’

Jesus told the people that the prophetic word was that we must prepare the way for God’s redemption which was on its way.

Is he the one? i.e. Hezekiah? John Bapt?

No! this is not the one. They are all agents of God’s work. But you my people are to be agents of God’s redemption, God’s love and hope for the world.

That is Isaiah’s task as a prophet, an agent of God’s word.

It is is ours as well.

Benedictus Dominus identification

I have for a long time identified with the closing words of the Benedictus Dominus – the canticle for Morning Prayer. They are from the gospel according to Luke, but echo the words of Isaiah and the later prophet Malachi.

You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
to give his people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins.
In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

It reminds me daily that God’s word, the prophetic word, for me is that if people are going to encounter God’s love or hope in my particular day and circumstances – I am the one who is going to have to help facilitate that. I am the one preparing the way for the Lord.

Namaste is a Hindu greeting. It is often accompanied by a slight bow with hands held together. The word itself means something like, “I recognize the divine in you.”

It seems to me a form of the prayer from the Benedictus. If I recognize the divine in you, then perhaps you will be able to reciprocate. And together we will have done our part in preparing the way of the Lord.

advent-2-dec-4.md

Sun, Dec 4, 2016: St. Peter’s

Sermon second Advent:

lectionary

Last week I announced that I intended to preach on the Isaiah passage each of these weeks through Advent. Week by week we will hear from the prophet Isaiah. Each of the passages is famously associated with Christmas – going back centuries. A great danger for us, I believe, is to become more and more immune to hearing the true power of the message. My hope is to help in hearing the message of the gospel.

Today we hear from (ch. 11 of Isaiah) – stump of Jesse – the peaceable kingdom, the wolf and the lamb lie down together.

• Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you (Rom)
• Rom refers to Isaiah
• John the Baptist appears

Broad influence of Isaiah

When we listen to Handel’s Messiah passage after passage is taken from the prophet. It has been called “the Fifth Gospel”, and its influence extends beyond Christianity to English literature and to Western culture itself.

gathering of commentaries: (mostly old, open-source, Christian http://biblehub.com/commentaries/isaiah/11-1.htm

Who Isaiah talking to?

While it is widely accepted that Isaiah the prophet did not write the entire book, there are good reasons to see parts of chapters 1–39 as stemming from the historic Isaiah ben Amoz, who lived in the Kingdom of Judah during the reigns of four kings from the mid to late 8th century BCE. During this period, Assyria was expanding westward from its origins in modern-day northern Iraq towards the Mediterranean, destroying first Aram (modern Syria) in 734–732 BCE, then the Kingdom of Israel in 722–721, and finally subjugating Judah in 701. (Wikipedia) historical setting

• In the previous chapter Isaiah refers to the Assyrian king threatening the nation of Israel – that he would soon to fade away.

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You Who Legislate Evil
10 1-4 Doom to you who legislate evil,
who make laws that make victims—
Laws that make misery for the poor,
that rob my destitute people of dignity,
Exploiting defenseless widows,
taking advantage of homeless children.
What will you have to say on Judgment Day,
when Doomsday arrives out of the blue?
Who will you get to help you?
What good will your money do you?
A sorry sight you’ll be then, huddled with the prisoners,
or just some corpses stacked in the street.
Even after all this, God is still angry,
his fist still raised, ready to hit them again.
Doom to Assyria!
5-11 “Doom to Assyria, weapon of my anger.
My wrath is a cudgel in his hands!
I send him against a godless nation,
against the people I’m angry with. (The Message)

At the same time Isaiah would live during the time of one of only 2 great and righteous kings in Israel and Judah – Hezekiah. And yet, the vision Isaiah has of a time to come goes beyond this righteous king. He is looking to some “time to come” – olam ha ba in the Hebrew.

Peaceable Kingdom

For myself, every time I encounter this passage, I think of the painting - Peaceable Kingdom by Edward HIcks. Edward Hicks (over 100 versions) Edward Hicks (April 4, 1780 – August 23, 1849) was an American folk painter and distinguished religious minister of the Society of Friends. He became a Quaker icon because of his paintings. (Wikipedia)

He portrayed an image of calm, breaking down the barriers, a new age of peace that fit his faith as a Quaker. Though I have never been to a Quaker meeting I have a deep sense of having experienced their waiting on the Spirit to speak. I know that the silence that we allow into our lives can often be life-changing and full of the Word of God. (Jim Kelsey and “High Church Quaker”)

It was clearly a deeply felt, personal image for him. It no doubt spoke to him of a vision of peace that was not at all present in the world around him – either in the church he believed in or the country he lived in. That would seem not to get in the way of it speaking equally powerfully to us – living in a very different age.

Isaiah, like Hicks, gives us a Messianic vision in the context of a message of hope for the world in which he lived.

The Messianic Age is a theological term referring to a future time of universal peace and brotherhood on the earth, without crime, war and poverty. Not just Christians, but Judaism before and Islam after believe that there will be such an age; some refer to it as the consummate “kingdom of God”, “paradise”, Peaceable Kingdom, or the “world to come”.

We might well say that Isaiah here is going beyond hope in political solutions and placing hope – our hope – in a Messianic time to come. But his hope is well-grounded in the time in which he lived.

Importance of spiritual empowerment of leader

What we can hear from Isaiah’s message – in the 8th c. bce directed at a a series of foreign leaders and corrupt and unjust leaders among his own people – is the vital nature of the leader of the people. The characteristics of the leader clearly make a difference whether God will unleash punishment or protection to the people.

Clearly he preached in the context of a culture that accepted a close relationship between the political leaders and the religious leaders. We do not share that presupposition. The whole combined message of the prophets of the Bible – Old Testament or New – is that the justice or righteousness of the political leaders mattered to the life of the nation and the people. “Where the shepherds are unjust, the people themselves will suffer.”

What shall we do with that message in our very different circumstances? Is this a message for our leaders? For the response that we ought to make to things happening in our nation?

Often the way the text is interpreted is that it anticipates a messianic age that was ushered in by Jesus of Nazareth. Christians, then, are the inheritors of the peaceable kingdom. Because we can see so clearly that this peaceful age has not been ushered in – I think we often don’t know what to do with it.

If we hear it rather as a message of hope to a world that strains under the weight of injustice and corruption as did ancient Israel – I think we must listen, pay attention, claim it The text begins to have power in every age. Not just the 8th c. bce – not just the 1st c. ce – not just in our own day. But indeed in our day.

Paul quoting from our passage

• playing with the word for “nations” or “gentiles” in his argument about the spread of the Gospel to non-Jews
• sending the over-riding message of hope

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Choose to Hope

Marty Haugen

Hope is born when we choose to believe
that love is stronger than hate.
Hope is born when our hearts learn to see
That every person is sacred

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In the times of darkness, in times of fear,
Choose to hope, choose to love,
Emmanuel is near.

Share His Life